This didn’t always work in his favor: In 2000, 50 was shot nine times in a parked car. No one was safe, and he governed his career with the same bravado. Case in point, his first single was “How To Rob,” a controversial track about stealing money from R&B singers, rappers, and Hollywood A-listers. The Queens-born rapper entered as hip-hop’s newest villain: a fearless, battle-ready MC who wanted to make a mark through unconventional methods. The icons who built the genre in the 1980s and ‘90s had moved on or-in the cases of The Notorious B.I.G. Dre, he was here, releasing a plethora of mixtape tracks for the underground with hopes of one day getting rich or dying trying.In 2003, hip-hop was in transition it had become glossy and needed an antagonist-that's where Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson came in. Before 50 was "In da Club" with Eminem and Dr. There's a reason a million-dollar bidding war broke out for 50 in 2002, and Guess Who's Back? showcases that reason better than any other legal release out there. Granted, this album isn't an authentic N.Y.C.-style mixtape, but it's awfully close, definitely modeled after one and therefore representative of precisely why 50 went on to become the most talked-about upcoming rapper in a decade. It's this occasional underground sense, though, that makes Guess Who's Back? such a worthwhile listen for fans. A few of the inclusions suffer from shoddy sound quality, particularly the trio of freestyles that close the album, while a few others sound like mixtape tracks, lacking commercially orientated production and verse-chorus-verse structures. About half come from Power of the Dollar, including such highlights as "Life's on the Line," "Ghetto Qua Ran," and "As the World Turns," while the others, such as "That's What's Up" (a G Unit posse track over the beat to Wu-Tang's "Ya'll Been Warned"), "Too Hot," and "Who U Rep With" (the latter two featuring Nas, who is sampled for the hook to "F*ck You" also), come mostly from mixtapes. or the bandwidth of cyberspace, many of these songs will be familiar. However, if you're indeed down with the underground, either via the streets of N.Y.C. The skimpily packaged album, released by the indie label Full Clip and documented by no credits whatsoever, compiles what it terms as "underground classics & freestyles." Unless you're connected to the New York mixtape circuit or happen to own a bootlegged version of 50's unreleased 2000 debut album for Columbia, the Trackmasters-produced Power of the Dollar, none of the 18 songs here are going to be familiar - they're all previously unreleased, legally that is. Months before 50 Cent burst into the mainstream with Get Rich or Die Tryin', his "In da Club"-highlighted debut for Shady/Aftermath, the highly touted rapper cleaned out his closet with Guess Who's Back?.
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